Susan Granger’s DVD Update for week of Fri., Oct. 14:
The farcical “Horrible Bosses” has three likeable losers (Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day) at themselves at the mercy of a trio of terrors (Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell), so they hire a hit-man (Jamie Fox) to assassinate their tormentors.
Maria Bello and Michael Sheen are parents who must come to terms with their dead son’s shooting rampage and suicide on a college campus in Shawn Ku’s relentlessly grim “Beautiful Boy.”
In the sci-fi “Lunopolis,” two documentarians uncover proof of a hidden city on the moon and the secret society determined to keep it concealed.
Informed by his own bipolar disorder, Brooks Hunter’s delusional horror thriller “Kenneyville” revolves around trying to maintain reality while being brainwashed, losing sanity in captivity, and the implications of implementing a bit of evil for a greater good.
Eva Longoria’s documentary “Harvest/La Coshecha” profiles three youngsters sacrificing their childhoods to help their families survive and provides an intimate glimpse into the lives of the 400,000 American-born children who pick our food, unprotected by child-labor laws.
Combining live action with animation and the voices of Sylvester Stallone, Adam Sandler, Cher and Nick Nolte, among others, “Zookeeper” stars Kevin James as an unlucky-in-love Boston zookeeper whose anthropomorphized animal charges come to his rescue. Children may like it but their parents will gnash their teeth. Worse yet, “Green Lantern” introduces Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, the cocky, irresponsible test pilot who is chosen to serve in an elite, intergalactic federation. Then there’s the tediously slapstick “Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer,” aimed at pre-adolescent girls who have outgrown Disney but are too young for “Twilight”-mania.
For pre-schoolers, “Angelina Ballerina: Dancing on Ice” finds the mouselings striving to put their best toe forward and young trainees prepare for competition in “Chuggington: The Chugger Championship.”
PICK OF THE WEEK: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain star in Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life,” an existential, impressionistic exploration of the wondrous origin and meaning of life. Illuminating and insightful, it has both dazzled and dumfounded discerning art-house audiences.